It was New York, Virginia, Oslo or Leicester for PhD student Ibrahim Umar. In the end, the 37-year-old from Nigeria decided on a university in Leicester.

But it wasn't the UK brand that swung it. He had scrutinised the calibre of lecturers in each university and Leicester had come out top. "I didn't make my choice on the lifestyle in the UK. I hadn't considered that," he says.

Today Education Guardian exclusively reveals the results of the largest ever study into why overseas students pick UK universities. The market research firm i-graduate quizzed 54,836 students from 221 countries studying in 71 UK universities late last year.

The findings show how typical Umar is: location is now a secondary consideration for overseas students deciding where to study. A university's brand, reputation and quality of teaching come first.

"These students are not choosing between the UK or the US, they are choosing between Yale or Cambridge," says Simon Bush, head of analysis and research at i-graduate.

The ease with which students can now compare universities across the world on the internet partly explains this finding. Students use universities' websites and sites that help them distinguish one university from another, such as www.studylink.com, to make a decision.

When pollsters asked the students what the most important source of information was, the largest proportion - 15.2% - answered: an institution's website. A year before, when the same study was conducted on a smaller scale, 13.6% had said this. Parents were the next most important source at 14.7%. League tables were not considered particularly important at 6.9%.

The bureaucracy of applying for a student visa meant that, in the past, overseas students tried to make it easier for themselves and confined their university choices to one country.

Now governments, realising how financially reliant their universities are on international students, have made it simpler to obtain the visas. In the UK for example, the Prime Minister's Initiative, launched by Tony Blair in 1999, has made it easier for them to fill in their visa forms. It appears to be successful.

The students polled, who were on a range of courses from foundation degrees to PhDs, ranked teaching quality as their highest priority. The university's reputation, its research quality and the department's reputation came next, followed by personal safety. Only then came the country.

Surprisingly, cost came a lowly ninth. This despite a separate, smaller study by i-graduate, published last week, which showed overseas students perceive the UK as "the most expensive place to study in the world". Overseas students in the UK are thought to invest up to £50,000 in their studies here.

The pollsters found priorities varied with nationality. Students from Nigeria were most concerned about personal safety, research quality and a university's reputation.

Malaysian and Japanese students placed the greatest emphasis on teaching quality. Chinese students wanted to know that their studies would enhance their short- and long-term career prospects.

For French students, a good social life in the UK was almost as important as the quality of their university's research, and more important than their personal safety. Indian students cared most about the cost of their studies, whether scholarships and bursaries were available, the benefit to their long-term careers, and the reputation of university departments.

The results of this study challenged stereotypes of overseas students from Asia. Far from the quiet, bookish, library-loving cohort they are often painted as, the study found 82% of Chinese students from overseas felt it was OK to disagree with their lecturers. Just 54% believed their faculty knew best, and 39% said they didn't like working within strict guidelines.

For 88% of the students polled, the UK had been their first choice. In last year's study, this was the case for 85% of the students. Our universities are a particular hit with students from the US, 94% of whom put the UK as their top choice. We are almost as popular with students from Greece, Hong Kong, France, Poland and Japan - 92% of each of these nationalities put the UK first.

Some 86% of Chinese students - the biggest source of overseas students for UK universities - picked the UK as their favourite.

The university admissions service Ucas recorded an 8% rise in international students last month, compared with the same time last year. Growth in the number of international students coming to the UK was believed to be levelling off until these figures were released. It is expected this will boost numbers of international students in the UK to well above the last count of 385,000.

But British universities cannot afford to become complacent. It's not just that they have to watch out as countries such as China, Singapore and Malaysia build more universities and strip them of some overseas students. It is what happens after the students have enrolled.

The study also found 58% of overseas students would blame someone else if they failed at university.